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Just hours after a federal judge allowed the Biden administration’s new student loan forgiveness plan to proceed, another judge blocked it.
U.S. District Judge J. Randal Hall, a George W. Bush appointee in Georgia, allowed a temporary two-week injunction against the plan to expire Thursday, paving the way for thousands of borrowers to receive debt relief, after finding that Georgia failed to demonstrate that sufficient harm would befall state tax revenue. Hall ordered the injunction last month, after seven Republican-led states filed lawsuits against the Biden administration over its debt-relief plan.
Later that same day, Matthew Schelp, a federal judge in Missouri , one of the other six states attached to the lawsuit, blocked the plan again. The states’ lawsuit rests partially on a claim that the relief plan would disrupt revenue at the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority.
Schelp, who was appointed by Donald Trump, said he issued the injunction so quickly after Hall’s expired in order to prevent the Biden administration from discharging any debt before he ruled on its legality.
“Allowing Defendants to eliminate the student loan debt at issue here would prevent this Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court from reviewing this matter on the backend, allowing Defendants’ actions to evade review,” Schelp wrote in his decision.
The temporary injunction reverses what was, for half a day, a small but consequential win for the president’s beleaguered student loan forgiveness agenda, which has been waylaid by legal setbacks at every turn.
